A transition from an author’s book to his conversation, is too often like an entrance into a large city, after a distant prospect. Remotely, we see nothing but spires of temples and turrets of palaces, and imagine it the residence of splendour, grandeur, and magnificence; but when we have passed the gates, we find it perplexed with narrow passages, disgraced with despicable cottages, embarrassed with obstructions, and clouded with smoke.–Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, no. 14 (Saturday, May 5, 1750)

Suggestions, plz!

I’ve mentioned it before in the blog, but I’m leaving for Oxford in just over a month. I’ve been thinking of books related to Oxford, novels set in Oxford, memoirs, that sort of thing, to read before I go. I recently read Mark Pattison’s Memoirs, and others that come immediately to mind are A Room of One’s Own and Gibbon’s autobiography, Jude the Obscure, Waugh’s Decline and Fall and Brideshead Revisited, but I’m not sure that any of these are exactly the thing I’m looking for. One that does sound promising, and which surprisingly I haven’t read, is Gaudy Night.

6 comments

I highly recommend Gaudy Night, as well as Jan Morris’s Oxford if you’ve never read it. If Sayers puts you in the mood for more detective fiction, there’s always Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse series, which goes perfectly with a pint at the Turf. And if YA literature is an option, I’m one of the many enthusiasts who would recommend Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass, or (more to the point) the short Lyra’s Oxford, which confirmed my suspicions that the fictional Jordan College was based on Exeter College, Pullman’s alma mater and the college in which I read English in 1996-97.

I just started it, actually–funny that. And you’re right, it’s quite learned. You know, having characters sitting around debating the technique of transfusions turns out to be right up my alley. Go figure.